50.0°

By Pat Forgey
Juneau Empire

JUNEAU – Sen. Kim Elton, who has represented Juneau in the Assembly, House and Senate for nearly two decades, has accepted a position in the administration of President Barack Obama dealing with Alaska issues in the Department of Interior.
Elton announced his resignation on the Senate Floor Monday morning. He then left the floor, and the building. His resignation, he said, is effective immediately.
Elton will be based in Washington, D. C. as director of Alaska Affairs for Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Department of Interior.
Elton said he was called by the White House in early January, seeing if he was interested in a job with the Obama administration. Then, in mid-January, Secretary-designee Salazar called him and said, “We want you to come to Washington and work for my office.”
Elton said the job was offered and accepted Friday, but that he’d already discussed it with U.S. Sens. Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski, and U.S. Rep. Don Young and Gov. Sarah Palin’s staff.
While in the nation’s capital for the Obama inauguration, a trip Elton said he’d scheduled much earlier, he met with top Interior officials.
“I felt very good about the leadership team that I’ve met and what they described as their vision for stewardship and economic progress,” Elton said.
Gov. Sarah Palin will now have to appoint another Democrat to represent Juneau in the Alaska Senate within 30 days. Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, is considered to be a likely candidate.

Disclaimer: JuneauBlogger is a forum for Capital City Weekly readers to share their opinions on topics that matter to Southeast. These comments do not represent Capital City Weekly's views.
Warning: Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions at our user agreement page. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.